Which landmark in Rome is the world’s smallest country’s central basilica and was completed in 1626?

St. Peter’s Basilica is the Rome landmark in Vatican City whose present basilica was completed in 1626.

The basilica stands over a site traditionally associated with the burial of Saint Peter, one of Jesus’s apostles and the first bishop of Rome according to Catholic tradition. The current building replaced an earlier Constantinian basilica and took more than a century to construct.

Donato Bramante, Michelangelo, Carlo Maderno, and Gian Lorenzo Bernini all played major roles in its design and completion. Michelangelo designed the famous dome, while Maderno extended the eastern end and created the principal facade. Bernini later shaped the great piazza and colonnade.

St. Peter’s Basilica is one of the most important pilgrimage churches in Christianity, but it is not the seat of the pope’s cathedra in the strict technical sense; that distinction belongs to the Archbasilica of Saint John Lateran. The basilica is also distinct from the sovereign state of Vatican City surrounding it.